His name is Ronald

We laughed. We cried. We sang (well, she did). We laughed a bit more. We cried again and I think we wrote a screenplay or at least a book, which could become an award-winning documentary. Okay. The documentary part wasn’t my idea.

Friday last week was an awesome kind of day for me. I jokingly tell people my days are brought to me by letters of the alphabet and single-digit numbers. I’m hell-bent for awesomeness but that’s another story. So, Friday as I was walking to the grocery store my friend Little J just happened to be driving by in the other direction. She was waving like a wild women to get my attention and did some crazy sign thing. We met up in Sobey’s parking lot for our annual donations-to charities cheque swap. My donation to her charitable adventure and hers to mine. We never seem to find time to get together in a more friendly setting and have resorted to emails of support and hoping to meet up someplace during the day.

We carry our donor sheets and cheque books with us during the months of March, April and May. She’s a Dew Drop fundraiser for Prince Edward Point Bird Observatory and I’m a VIP rider in the Annual Becel Ride for Heart. Laugh? Cry? Sing? Write? Normally, our annual cheque swap isn’t a reason for theatrics or creative brainstorming. Normally, we power through a coffee, swish past the familial pleasantries and bring each other up-to-speed on our personal pursuits. Barely enough time to shoot the breeze a bit, then get down to the business of swapping cheques. If you know Little J, and many of you do, you know she’s gonna sing about something, somewhere, sometime.

So, there we were, standing in the parking lot, but I wasn’t being asked to write a cheque for her charity, which perplexed me. As it turns out, she’d been rushed off her feet taking care of her brother, who has been desperately ill. She’s been so involved with overseeing his care she didn’t even mention the Dew Drops and she’s all about the Dew Drops during the annual Baillie Birdathon at Prince Edward Point. Nope, no Dew Drop talk because since January, she’s been driving back and forth from her home here in Prince Edward County to the hospital in Hamilton to be the voice for her brother. The story of his care was the teary part. And, letting all y’all know his name just happens to be Ronald is a frustratingly funny thing. As the voice for her brother sometimes she sang to him through his pain and confusion and, more often than Little J cares to recall, she was the advocating voice. The “in your face,” “he’s a person,” “he feels pain,” “he needs help,” “who’s listening to me” and “does anyone really care” voice.

So, there we were in the parking lot and Little J spoke of what can only be described as a nightmare assault on her brother Ronald, who was born with severe cerebral palsy. Ronald was a man of very few words who, because of a tracheostomy, became a man without words. Forty-one years of Ronald’s life have been spent in residential care where he gets total support, personal care and, of course, the respect he deserves as a human being. In his home, Ronald is a person who is loved and is loving. But this past winter Ronald had a health emergency and was rushed to a hospital in Hamilton. Through the balance of winter and the better part of this spring, he has played a game of hide-and-seek with death. In a short period of time, he knocked on that door many times. Without his sister’s voice he surely would have perished. And it seems as one health crisis was averted, another would take its place.

Ronald, at the best of times, is a fragile human being. He needs to be handled with care, with love and respect. So, too, do we all. Yet, in spite of the feeding tubes, the tracheostomy that robbed him of his voice, C. dificile, fistulas and bedsores, Ronald managed to smile. According to his sister, “he’s a beamer.” And, during the weeks and months of his illness, a sad commentary on the state of Ontario’s health care system began to emerge. Ronald slowly stopped being a person to the very people who were charged with his total care. Tube by tube he became “a patient.” He became a bed number, a room number, a case on a clipboard, the man with the feeding tubes, “the trach” and the respect for the person he is, disappeared. His sister, my friend, watched the scenario unfold through her tears, frustration, singing, laughing and loving.

You and I know, the provision of health care is a hugely stressful business. Health care professionals are superhuman on the best of days, and it takes a very special kind of person to be a health care provider. Health care isn’t a nine-to-five, Monday to Friday thing. It isn’t for the faint of heart. But, it is the good, the bad, the ugly, the messy, the sad, the triumphant, the hopeful and the hopeless. It’s a lather, rinse and repeat, day after day, kinda thing. Sometimes it’s just easier to depersonalize—to lose a person like Ronald and create a bed number. In an article written by Denise Hawthorne, RN and Nancy Yurkovich, RN, they “outline the assumptions of health care professionals as health caring and express a concern over the decreased level of caring in the profession.” Somedays it makes you laugh and cry and sing and cry a bit more.

For all of you folks working at the hospital in Hamilton, “his name is Ronald.” Don’t be afraid to say hello. He’s got a beamer of a smile and he just might make your day a bit more human. We laughed, we cried, she sang and we cried a bit more. I got a cheque for my Ride for Heart. Little J got her “brudder” Ronald back.

theresa@wellingtontimes.ca